Founders Journal
Are You a Calvinist?
If you mean by a rigid Calvinist, one who is fierce, dogmatical, and censorious, and ready to deal out anathemas against all who differ from him, I hope I am no more such a one than I am a rigid Papist. But, as to the doctrines which are now stigmatized by the name of Calvinism, I cannot well avoid the epithet rigid, while I believe them: for there seems to be no medium between holding them and not holding them; between ascribing salvation to the will of man, or the power of God; between grace and works, Romans, 11:6.; between being found in the righteousness of Christ, or in my own, Philippians, 3:9. Did the harsh consequences often charged upon the doctrine called Calvinistic really belong to it, I should have much to answer for if I had invented it myself, or taken it upon trust from Calvin; but, as I find it in the Scriptures, I cheerfully embrace it, and leave it to the Lord to vindicate his own truths and his own ways, from all the imputations which have been cast upon them.
--John Newton (author of the hymn, Amazing Grace)